Orlando convenience store clerk fires back after gunman shoots and kills customer

[shadowrider]

ORLANDO --

A bizarre shooting broke out in an Orange County convenient store late Saturday night.

Police said a masked suspect shot and killed a man inside the JC Grocery store, on Rio Grande Avenue, but then the store clerk pulled out a gun of his own and fired back.

Investigators have been on the scene since 11 p.m. Saturday gathering evidence and talking with the clerk, all to find out why the first shooting happened.

Deputies said a light-skinned man in his 50s walked into the store, and then a dark-skinned man walked in behind him and shot him.

That, investigators said, was when the store clerk pulled out his gun and shot the gunman in the face.

The wounded shooter managed to get away, but deputies found him later in a car off Mercy Drive.

Both the gunman and the man he shot were taken to the hospital. The latter died from his injuries later Sunday morning.

Authorities said they do not know what caused the original shooting -- whether the suspect had some kind of grudge, or it was just a robbery that went bad.

http://www.cfnews13.com/article/news/2010/december/180109/Orlando-convenience-store-clerk-fires-back

Guns as a solution to guns -- +1000

[Uben]

1. Shot the gunman in the face?

Musta went to the Dick Cheney hunting school!

[rfranklin]

2. Curious as to the meaning of your comment...

can you explicate?

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[rfranklin]

7. Thanks for the gratuitous insult...

Never heard of your scoring system. But what I see here is that there is a victim dead so I wouldn't exactly it was a victory.

[Euromutt]

14. It's not MY scoring system, and I don't subscribe to it

If you have a problem with it, direct your complaints to its originator.

[Euromutt]

4. Ugh. You do have to wonder.

No matter how dumb armed robbers get (and let's face it, if they weren't dumb, they'd be doing something less risky than trying to knock over convenience stores), they don't tend to go putting holes in those present from the outset. If you have half a brain, you don't just walk in and start committing first-degree homicides before you've even gotten your hands on the contents of the till and as many plastic bags stuffed with cigarettes as you can carry.

So it seems plausible that the shooter had it in for the "light-skinned man in his 50s" beforehand, but then again, maybe I'm just overestimating the shooter's intelligence.

Seems to me, based on available evidence, that the wrong GSW victim died, though.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

5. yes, that is what I think ... those two had some Unfinished business

that just happened to come to a final conclusion at this convenience store. ugh.

[safeinOhio]

6. There is always the possibility that

the shooter could have been an undercover LEO who was chasing an armed killer. If that had been the case the clerk could have been facing the murder of a cop. I would not assume anything. Things are not always what they appear to be at first. Many cops have been shot at serving no-knock warrants. They have been known to get addresses wrong.

[Glassunion]

9. In this particular case, I highly doubt that this scenario is even a remote possibility.

http://www.news4jax.com/news/26029160/detail.html

"preliminary investigation suggests the gunfire erupted during an attempted armed robbery after a man entered the store with a handgun and a mask over his face." I doubt that an undercover LEO would be walking into a store, gun drawn and wearing a mask, behind someone then shooting them without making any orders to the suspect.

You are correct however about "Many cops have been shot at serving no-knock warrants. They have been known to get addresses wrong.". I have read about LEOs serving a warrant on the wrong house, getting shot at. I remember in particular where they raided the wrong house, failed to identify themselves clearly as they were entering, and the homeowner, trying to protect his 6 kids, shared gunfire with the police until they could clearly identify themselves. The officers later received an award for valor in the incident.

[spin]

10. The officers received an award for valor?

Let me get this straight, they served a no-knock warrant on the wrong house and exchanged gunfire with a homeowner who was trying a protect his six kids. For acting like the Keystone Cops they get an award for valor? The homeowner should have got the award not the cops.

[Glassunion]

11. Found the link! My Googlefu is weak today.

http://www.startribune.com/local/26083024.html

[spin]

12. The story is amazing ...

To be fair it looks like the police got the wrong address from an informant. A language barrier also caused part of the problem.

Fortunately the homeowner, his wife and their six kids were not injured in the fire fight.

[Glassunion]

13. I gotta hand it to the guy.

I don't know how well I would have handled a group of guys swarming my home. Granted I have about 2000 rounds in my Alamo(upstairs closet) and about 5000 in my basement in the safe. I guess having kids gives you the inspiration to do what you have to.

Try searching for CATO institue and botched raids. Their website has some scary stuff. There does come a point when it stops being anecdotal. I would post the link but I'm iPhone'ing it today.

[Euromutt]

16. "Botched Paramilitary Police Raids" map

http://www.cato.org/raidmap/

[SteveM]

19. Goddam multi-jurisdictional task forces.

[SteveM]

18. Same thing happened in the 1990s in a rural community south of Austin, TX....

No-knock break-in performed at a couple's place. The man, not knowing who was breaking in, grabbed a defective military rifle and was promptly shot and killed. LEO's (some kinda of multi-jurisdictional task force) got an award for killing this guy, and for nothing else. A few years ago in Austin, a no-knock bust resulted in a sheriff's deputy being shot and killed by a drug-dealer who thought it was a home invasion. The local MJTF has since been disbanded.

[SteveM]

17. I remember several such incidents, one in my hometown of Gainesville, Fla....

where the head of the political science department at the University of Florida was rousted and roughed up during a "drug bust." The LEOs got the wrong address. One of the main liberal arts buildings at UF is named after him: Manning Dauer Hall.

[Euromutt]

15. Theoretically possible, but vanishingly unlikely

Given the description of events, your hypothetical undercover LEO would have had to have been behaving in a manner entirely inconsistent with his function. Not to put too fine a point on it, he would have had to have been behaving like a criminal.

The fact that LEOs have been shot at serving "no-knock" warrants is a very strong argument against the overuse of "no knock" warrants in the first place, particularly based on uncorroborated tip-offs received from informants, themselves of less than impeccable repute.

[jazzhound]

8. Do criminals obey gun "control" laws?